How come hdtvs have good quality and PC monitors are crap?

It's no joke. I've had so many monitors including the Sony FW900 (which is probably the best consumer CRT) and tried my hand at TN, VA, and IPS panels and they all pale in comparison to my lowly Panasonic 42UT50 plasma. The UT series was the low end a couple years ago that could be had for a few hundred. With the PS3 hooked up to it, it makes Uncharted look better than 99% of PC games played on 22-27" monitors.. unless I hook it up to my gaming rig in which case that looks best, but certainly not ideal.

The best I hear right now is the Eizo Foris FG2421 VA panel with an actual contrast ratio of 5k:1. This isn't bad but is there anything else I should be aware of? All these 144hz panels don't have me fooled with their TN garbage so I won't fall for that.. and IPS glow is horrible. I guess I'll have to wait for a 25" OLED that won't break the bank.

Surely there's some PC gamers here that care about contrast, viewing angles, colors, AS WELL AS input lag and framerate.

Do what I do which is hook up both PS3 and PC to the same display. I can see the PS3 needing a lot of help. I've been using HDTVs as PC monitors for a while now. I haven't bought a PC monitor since 2006.

Plasma Displays in general have much higher contrast ratios also,higher refresh rates than LCD or LCD LED Blacklit Displays .that what make you TV looks better , try getting a gaming monitor with very high contrast ratio , high refresh rate,lowest response time etc ...

Also (even if the game is running in the same graphic settings) bigger displays usually gives more rich visuals than lower sizes.

That's why I just use a Panasonic Plasma with one of my PCs. Dell's Ultrasharp monitors are great for brighter scenes, but any high contrast or dark scenes then it obviously pales in comparison to the Plasma.

No company is really interested in pushing monitor sized display with very high quality at affordable price. Sony has some high end oled monitors out now but super expensive(5-6 thousand dollars) and not meant for desktop use. There are some people interested but most people are fine with cheap $100-$200 monitors so not a big market the only hope for pc monitors to have anywhere even close to display quality parity to modern HDTV and Projectors is for oled monitors to become affordable and reduce burn in enough to work for desktop use.

I don't have a plasma T.V but bought the highest quality display cheap display to put infront of my bed. A used 34" 1080i Sony Trinitron not the best display out there but for only $20 insane value for what it offers. I've been using that for a while now time to use my PC and play games from my bed just got back to using my desk setup with lowly 32" Panasonic LCD fantastic colors and looks sharp compared to the Sony but black levels are so poor in comparison and hence overall contrast is poor. I finally understand what they mean by blacks actually being black and not grey. Overall image quality in games and anything that isn't alot of text is alot better on the Sony. That fact that I'm viewing it from further away Panasonic while being around the same size makes it even more loopsided as helps to hide flaws in games so they look even better.

My PS3 and PC is connected to my Sony 40" LCD.. I like gaming on a large screen rather than a monitor. Honestly, I can't tell the difference between monitors and regular LCD's, LED's and Plasma's with my untrained eyes.

Every tried ipc monitors, i have one , if find them better quality than my tv but it's also a lot smaller.

Only game on the tv anymore, with x360 controller for windows.

Reason why they look bad is because your comparing monitors to Plasmas which are a step above LED/LCD TV's (Plasma is the top for the casual market). I sometimes game on my Samsung plasma and it looks amazing

Good quality IPS along with gaming monitors (high contrast/refresh rate) look better than LED/LCD TV's and don't look a ton worse than a plasmas

You realize how bad they are for reading text don't you?

Not sure if a troll post or...

Perhaps the large size, also gives an illusion that its better than it already is. Well is better, but theres no way it makes uncharted ps3 blobbed stuff look better than pc o.O

I have a glossy ips(avoid the matte monitors it hurts the picture quality to a degree), looks fine here, just DON"T use it in a pitch black room and DON'T play/watch material with lots of dark scene. Ips glow solved.

Eh, post seems trolling.

Hopefully with OLED we will see computer monitors increase in quality and hopefully look as good as plasmas do. Problem though with using only a plasma as a pc monitor is not just the image retention... but it enhances so many things like color and brightness/contrast/sharpness, that its really useless if you want a true representation of what you are looking at. With a plasma its improving on the weaknesses of video so much its hard to get a real sense of its original quality making it hard to edit video or images on it. Also, all the plasmas i've ever owned have had troubles controlling brightness consistantly throughout the picture when things change in certain areas.

Comes to price.. i've had cheap pc monitors which look pretty good but their color and contrast is a bit weak. Then i have 1000 dollar or more monitors which the colors and contrast really destroy the cheaper ones. You really get what you pay for sometimes.

Its so crazy though if i watch a movie even on my most expensive pc monitor, my plasma tv will make that same movie look twice as good. Plasmas just have that ability to hide the flaws and enhance everything else... so i can see how your confused why a plasma can look so much better sometimes.

I use an Orion 42" plasma has my monitor, god this TV is dated only support a max resolution of 1280 x 768 but I prefer the big screen. When I have money I will get another 42" TV that supports full HD.

I have an HP 1600p IPS monitor and a professionally calibrated Panasonic VT60 plasma. The plasma completely obliterates the monitor as far as picture quality goes.

The extra resolution on the monitor is nice sometimes, but the image quality isn't even close.

I always thought it was the opposite.

I agree.. If it wasn't for 21:9 monitor I would have got my self a 32" Plasma from Samsung or Panasonic, but the aspect ration and higher pixel density swayed me over to a monitor.

I have hooked up my PC to my 50" Panasonic but its not ideal.

Taking CRT's out of the picture (I assume few actually use those anymore), PC monitors and HDTV are basically the same thing. They have the same various AV ports , same picture quality, support same resolutions. One difference may be that strictly PC monitors have no tv tuner. But most people with cable TV don't use that anyway since they use the tuner in their cable box. I've been using my HDTV with my pc for several years now.

Plasma? Yes. LED/LCD TVs? No unless the fonts are too small. For some reason, the plasma TVs I've seen have blurrier text.

Right i understand you can't exactly compare a typical monitor to plasma.. but I thought as TIME passes by monitors should up their game like everything else. Doesn't seem to be the case. I mean even LCD hdtvs have improved tenfold over the past decade but it seems LCD monitors are stuck. What they've introduced now is 120hz and 144hz, lightboost strobing, and more inputs but they still neglect higher contrast and out-of-box colors that don't have to be professionaly calibrated. Also lcd monitors have had <5ms response for years now so this doesn't need improving.. but I do see G-Sync being a special feature soon to be released in models this year.

So yeah.. I get that a typical monitor can't compare to plasma but simply browsing the latest monitors at your local brick mortar shouldn't result in looking at ugly pictures with a couple standouts that are okay at best. Same stores have a row of hdtvs all looking great even the cheapest bargain bin model. I made this thread to get a feel of what ppl think on the topic and not to troll.